Beast Wars: Transformers
For those of you who don't remember this one, this was a 90's spin-off from the original 1980's Transformers cartoon, set 300 years after the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons - with the Autobots winning the war and gaining complete control of Cybertron.
However, a splinter faction of Decepticon's descendants - the Predacons - want to regain control of Cybertron and steal a Golden Disk (the same one from the
Voyager spacecraft) before fleeing in a ship, planning to travel back in time to prehistoric Earth to recover a large Energon stash; of which will allow the Predacons to re-start the Great War.
They are followed by a group of Autobot descendants - the Maximals - and both ships end up crashing on a planet that seems to be Earth but has several differences; these include vast amounts of energon that hasn't formed naturally, floating islands, mysterious structures and a second moon.
On this planet, the two sides take on Beast forms to protect themselves from the energon radiation and begin to battle each other.
As time goes on, however, both sides come in contact with a dangerous alien race, uncover various secrets about the planet they've landed on, and find that the message on the Golden Disk contains more than just the location of Energon stash, but also instructions that could rewrite history as they know it.
In my opinion, it was a great cartoon and I did enjoy watching it. It was funny, it was suspenseful, there was plenty of action to keep me entertained, plenty of nods to the original show, interesting characters who you loved to hate/root for and even some sad scenes (including arguably the saddest death scene since Optimus Prime's death in the original movie).
Aside from that, my reason for having it brought back is because we've seen the original story of 'Autobots vs. Decepticons on Earth and Cybertron' remade and redone so many times with positive/negative results depending on the series, so shouldn't this spinoff get at least one remake itself?
TV animation has improved dramatically since the 90's when this show was made, which would definitely be a bonus if done right, especially considering some of the awkward/hilarious moments where the Emmy-winning animation of the original show would screw up...
...that looks painful...
On top of this,
Transfomers - even in the bad adaptations - as a franchise has proven to be creative in many ways, even when they're repeating the same story several times over. A remake of Beast Wars could not only work but arguably be better than the original show if done right. Much like how the Transformers can have different forms depending on the adaptation, it would be interesting to see the Maximals and Predacons having different beast modes from what we originally saw, including having prehistoric animals other than dinosaurs.
I'd love for the Predacon leader (be it Megatron, Magmatron, Cyrotek or someone else) to have a beast mode based on Spinosaurus as I think that would be practical (Spinosaurus been the biggest carnivorous dinosaur on land, been suited to hunt in water and having arms it could actually use unlike T.Rex) and would look pretty intimidating (especially during his appearance in
Planet Dinosaur).
Furthermore, the
Beast Wars comic book "The Gathering" showed that Grimlock was aboard the Maximal ship when it crash landed, so it would be awesome to see him fighting alongside the Maximals in a T.Rex body.
While I do love the original series, its hard not to point out its flaws; like how come the Maximal and Predacon leaders just
happen to be called Optimus and Megatron (granted, Optimus' full name is Optimus
Primal and Megatron had a different name and chose to name himself after the famous Decepticon leader, but this is still pushing it).
Here's the original two-part opening to the series.
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